{"id":6729,"date":"2014-03-14T07:59:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T06:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/?p=6729"},"modified":"2014-03-14T13:05:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-14T12:05:43","slug":"hudson-and-walker-share-lead-in-agadir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/hudson-and-walker-share-lead-in-agadir\/","title":{"rendered":"Hudson and Walker share lead in Agadir"},"content":{"rendered":"

England\u2019s Rebecca Hudson and Sophie Walker fired a pair of five-under-par 66s at Golf de l\u2019Ocean in Agadir to share the first round lead at the Lalla Meryem Cup in Morocco.
\nHudson birdied two of the last three holes to grab the lead on a becalmed morning while Walker teed off and finished in blustery conditions in the afternoon.
\nPlaying in her first tournament of the season, Hudson reproduced the form that led to her winning four titles on the Ladies European Tour, including three in 2008.
\n\u201cI\u2019m very happy,\u201d said Hudson. \u201cI hit the ball well. I haven\u2019t done as much practice as I would like but I came out and practised here the last few days. I had the ball under control and putted well and that makes a big difference. Hopefully I can keep this going forward.\u201d
\nHer preparation over the last fortnight included tiling a friend\u2019s bathroom and she added: \u201cIt\u2019s great because she\u2019s got a field behind her house so I\u2019ve just been practising my short game. I have been practising but not long game. I came here and practised my putting. My short game today was very good and I got up and down all but one time.\u201d
\nWalker hit every fairway and made six birdies and one bogey. She said: \u201cYesterday I had an afternoon practice round and I thought that would be good preparation because it always gets really windy here. I holed a decent putt on 11 and knocked it really close. Two under after three, you\u2019ve got to take advantage of that.
\n\u201cIt was a couple of clubs wind and on the back nine it was a cross wind a lot. I played well last week but just didn\u2019t putt very well, so the aim this week was to putt better and I did that today. I\u2019ll just keep doing what I\u2019m doing and try to keep my percentage of fairways up and my putts low.\u201d
\nSophie Giquel-Bettan, winner of the Ladies Open de Portugal in 2007, mixed six birdies with two bogeys to sit alone in third on four-under.
\nThe 31-year-old from Lyon said: \u201cI really enjoyed it. With the jet lag from China it was perfect to play early this morning because I was awake so early. It was pretty good. We had perfect conditions, like 20, 24 degrees and the wind picked up around the 14th hole, but it was good conditions and I did the job and it was fun.\u201d
\nGiquel-Bettan\u2019s husband and occasional caddie Axel is on the bag for French European Tour rookie Gary Stal who is playing in the Hassan Golf Trophy this week at nearby Golf du Palais Royal.
\nAriya Jutanugarn, Jing Yan, Nina Holleder, Charley Hull and Laura Davies share fourth place on three-under-par.
\nJutanugarn birdied the first three holes and made the turn in five-under. However an erratic driver cost the 18-year-old a double on the par-four 10th and a triple on the par-four 17th. Despite four additional birdies, she was two-over par on the back nine.
\n\u201cMy putting and irons were good today and helped me a lot but my driver was so bad. I hit like six provisional balls today and had a lost ball and had a seven because of my driver. I couldn\u2019t hit it straight so I had to change my mind and hit three-wood,\u201d said Jutanugarn.
\nHull, who finished in joint second place, three strokes behind Jutanugarn, 12 months ago, bogeyed the fourth but had four birdies in a row from the sixth hole.
\n\u201cIt was good and I hit it pretty well, apart from one drive,\u201d Hull said. \u201cI could have been a lot under par, but the putts didn\u2019t go in. I missed a few short putts to begin with but I learned from that and had four birdies on the trot where I should have had six. I could have shot a lot lower.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a great golf course. It\u2019s quite tight off the tee so you need to be hitting it straight. I woke up this morning and my eye was swollen and I think I must have been bitten at night. I thought I would be was playing with one eye but it wasn\u2019t too bad. I could see more out of my right eye than my left so people at home will probably think, \u2018What\u2019s the matter with her eye?\u2019 It\u2019s gone down a bit now though.\u201d<\/em>
\nNobuhle Dlamini, Adriana Brent and Karolin Lampert were the best placed rookies on two-under-par.
\nDlamini, the first representative of Swaziland on the LET, was particularly pleased with her first round on tour, given that she is suffering with a bout of flu.
\nAfter her round, she commented: \u201cI have to say, I\u2019m chuffed with myself. I had a really good start, I started with a birdie and made a couple more birdies and finished three under on the front nine. It got a bit tougher on the second nine and the wind blew more. I got a couple of bad drives but held it together.\u201d<\/em>
\nShe admitted to feeling nervous on the first tee, but it didn\u2019t last long. \u201cI took that three-wood and just hoped to get the ball on the fairway. I was really nervous with it being my first professional tournament on the LET. I thought, just get it on the fairway, and I\u2019ll be fine,\u201d she said. \u201cI hit it smack bang in the middle of the fairway and had 68 to the pin. I hit it a metre away and made the birdie putt. The confidence was flowing and I had a nice par five as well. I hit three-wood, lay-up, made a nice par and then I birdied the next par three and I thought, \u2018I\u2019m on my way.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

England\u2019s Rebecca Hudson and Sophie Walker fired a pair of five-under-par 66s at Golf de l\u2019Ocean in Agadir to share the first round lead at the Lalla Meryem Cup in Morocco. Hudson birdied two of the last three holes to grab the lead on a becalmed morning while Walker teed off and finished in blustery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}